I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman

Poor Richard says, “Funny? How about hilarious?” PR and I have always known there must be something wrong with the way us billions think. Bit it is the true believers who reside in the metaphysically strange neighborhood, of course.

What is Darwin harmless on about you ask?
Why this, of course:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8614232.stm
Yes, yes I know I mentioned it before but it just makes squeal with girlish glee to do it just one more time.

As for our ignorance about Islam- what do you expect when Islamists won’t accept translations of the Holey Q’uirm into English so we can see its great Wisdom for ourselves?
Wisdom like this touching passage from the life of the prophet:
Sahih Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 151 Narrates
‘Aisha: I used to PLAY WITH DOLLS in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah’s Apostle used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me. (The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for ‘Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty.)

Now isn’t that sweet? Momammed’s six year old virgin wife playing with dolls in front of him.What a happy family scene. The Catlick Church take note- this is how you do pedophilia properly- out in the open and unafraid!

I am intrigued by the notion of various religions that your mental processes can be affected by eating certain types of food. Here in reality land, this is certainly true, alchohol, magic mushrooms, various types of whacky-baccy are all well documented ways to influence your mentality.

In religious fantasy land however, you can learn the difference between good and evil by eating magic fruit, if you can get past the angel with the flaming sword, you can eat from the tree of everlasting life and become immortal. Why eating pork should colour your understanding of eternal matters I will leave Mo to explain.

In my lifetime I must have eaten tons of pork. About a decade ago I became a vegetarian out of concern about animal cruelty. I dont think that Mo ever gave animal cruelty that much thought.

The pork ban comes from the days before there was fridges and pork spoiled very easily – so it makes sense that desert dwellers avoided it.

Same for the Jewish ban on pork and seafood – there were times of the year seafoods – well, shellfish aren’t safe to eat – so instead of figuring out when, it was simpler to ban it (sounds pretty typical of religious strategy)

And the other part is that shellfish live on the bottom, where all the poop goes and the mistaken beleif that pigs also wallow in poop

so there’s a perception of pigs and shellfish being unclean – which must be why you get sick when you eat them

@Nina. Its also possible that desert groups want to ban their daughters from fraternising (leads to fucking) with coastal groups (e.g. shellfish) and forest groups (e.g. pigs). Comparatively easy thing to manipulate is disgust (can’t argue with it) and food preferences (breaking bread with people is central to making friends). We know that control of daughter sexualitiy is important in Abrhamic religions and also that girls are often attracted to exotic boys. Has anyone tested this?

@Daoloth – devise the test. it must be at least tried. and possibly filmed.
@Nina – religion isn’t just for controlling women. I think it’s actually surprisingly non-discriminative when it comes to who it was designed to control.. (spoing!)
@Author – I too laughed out loud (at my desk) due to the newspaper headline. Right. Back to work… sending people to Saudi! Spoing!

@Nina & AJ. I had this notion once that God was germs.
Hear me out before you dismiss the idea!
Think of all the things that religion has rituals and obsessions about- food, sex, toilet issues (think of how funny Islamists get over washing rituals, Jews too) strangers, death/ burial.
They all have in common that they are potential disease vectors.
Now Thornhill et al. (2008) found that high local religiosity did indeed correlate with high local pathogen loading http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2605802/
I wonder if a lot of the ritual element that constitutes religion has a similar source- the rituals and rationalisations are by-products of millenia of cobbled-together habits that have tended to reduce disease.
That, or it’s an excuse to fuck kiddies.

@alexjolliffe – yes, religion is about controlling everyone, but they don’t control people equally – religion tends to have rigid gender roles and gender specific rules – and since it’s men who are making those rules…… women get the fuzzy end of the lollipop

it’s always funny to me when a beleiver wants atheists to rank religions in terms of what the atheist thinks them acceptable or more believable.

because when the broadest concept – a diety/supernatural – is ridiculous on it’s own, the details of worshiping said skydaddy aren’t even considerations.

that some religions are worse than others in their violence levels (historic and current), their opression of women and their attitudes towards minorities and non-/other beleivers, doesn’t make the least offender acceptable or more beleivable

@Nina
I hear that the ban on pork is not only due to health concerns (parasites and all that), but economic. It’s very expensive to raise pigs in the desert due to maintenance. So easier to ban it than try to explain economic theory. As for being unclean, I can get that too in ye olde times. Also remember that pigs and dogs eat their own poop.

As for Atheists ranking religions, I do it mostly by judging their overall behavior, tendency to follow their morality, how their god follows that morality, silly things they do for their god, and how much they want to interfere in the lives of everyone else. Ironically Satanism ranks higher than christianity because devil-worship is more honest and less likely to try to change secular law to favor just them.

Fact: there have been so many pigs and swine around on this planet that litterally every molecule of its top soil and what is on it, including those of jesus and mo in their living days, was once part of a pig or went through a swine’s intestines at least one time and probably more. Now we’re all haram.

Back in the eighties when I lived in Indonesia the government was desperate to convert the tribes of PNG to Islam and after years of carrot and stick (lots of pushy troops and a few development projects) one of the larger tribes came round to the idea and agreed to mass convert at a big ceremony. A large number of islamic big shots from Java came over for the event which was played up heavily.

After the ceremony the headman declared that he was so delighted to have finally become a true muslim that they were throwing a big traditional party. Pig roast, yay.

Comment¬

NOTE: This comments section is provided as a friendly place for readers of J&M to talk, to exchange jokes and ideas, to engage in profound philosophical discussion, and to ridicule the sincerely held beliefs of millions. As such, comments of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature will not be tolerated.

If you are posting for the first time, or you change your username and/or email, your comment will be held in moderation until approval. When your first comment is approved, subsequent comments will be published automatically.

Look! A new book…

The J&M Top Ten

Help keep J&M online

jesusandmo.net regularly comes under attack, but NearlyFreeSpeech.net and Cloudflare do a great job of keeping it up and running.
If you want to help, you can make an anonymous donation which goes directly into our account with:
Click on the NearlyFreeSpeech image above to go to the donate page. Thank you!